> I finally saw "Brassed Off" recently, and I enjoyed it very> much.....> I attended with a friend who used to teach music history at Julliard,> and he came away asking the following question: how can
this be an> amateur band?? The players depicted *presumably* could not
have> attended music school, or even forked out for regular private> tutelage. Yet, as he said, there is no amateur group of
any kind to> his knowledge which could play with such musicality and command.> Did these players really just learn from their parents, who learned> from theirs?? Are there no ringers in the group, say, music> teachers??

Well, as ever, reality is both more complex and simpler than it appears.

The current brass band movement (they are very proud of calling themselves
that - there is a political element which cannot be ignored) is absolutely
packed with music students, music teachers, failed pros and the like.

After all, the definition of amateur (well, at least it was the last
time I checked) is "earns less than two thirds of income from PLAYING"
- teaching music is not counted. Add to that the fact that the major
bands pay serious "expenses" payments to their players, and you have a
number of bands which are about as amateur as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

On the other hand, there are literally hundreds of bands in the country.
Few of them achieve the standards of the top twenty or so, but the standard
is nevertheless quite astonishing. And many of the better players
are either self taught or have been brought up through the brass band :
there is, after all, no better way to learn a brass instrument than to
sit next to a good player for hours and just work at it. (I owe most
of what I can do now to joining a brass band when I was in my late twenties,
and watching and listening. Of course, the man I was watching and
listening to, the "amateur" principal cornet of the band, had just spent
fifteen years as co-principal trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra.)

But it is difficult to give an impression of the hard work and commitment
that many of the real amateur players put into their playing. For
example, I am officially "signed up" as a member of a band which is based
some fifty miles away. If I help them out, it's on a strictly "one
rehearsal, one concert" basis (I did three rehearsals for them when they
won the East Anglian Regional Championship). But a good friend of
mine, who plays in the band, drives the fifty-odd miles, on back roads,
each way at least twice a week to rehearse, and will do six or seven rehearsals
a week before a contest. These are three and a half hour rehearsals,
no breaks, hard
playing all the way through, and no reimburesement of petrol costs.

I couldn't do it. And that sort of commitment is not at all uncommon.
I know people who drive from one end of the country to the other to conduct
bands (OK, it's a small country, but it's still a long drive).

So, on the one hand, I am amazed at the sacrifice that these people
are prepared to make for the pastime that they love. You just have
to be impressed at the commitment and hard work and respect the qualty
of the results they achieve. (The real brass banders that is - -
you would expect no less from the top bands.)

On the other hand, there are a number of points to make about the whole
exercise.

First, I don't think it's really about music. By the time the
average band gets to the contest or concert platform, they have spent so
much time on the "test pieces" that it has become an athletic event, not
an artistic one. Usually, all the spontaneity has been rehearsed
out. The band that wins is the one which makes least mistakes (usually
because they were the least nervous on the day, or because their cornet
section had swallowd the most beta blockers, or drunk just the right amount
of alcohol) or plays the piece in the way that
the adjudicator expects to hear it, or makes the "sound" the adjudicator
wants (one band I played with kept losing contests after a certain level
- the adjudicators remarks usually said "too orchestral").

Secondly, they are so irritatingly insular it's unbelievable.
Many of them have no interest in events outside the brass band world (and
why should they? he asked in a rare moment of generosity)

Thirdly, though they are good at what they do, what they do is very
limited. If music is a decathlon, they are good triathletes.
(For example, the nonsense about soprano cornet being hard to play.
Well, it's harder than a Bb cornet, maybe harder than an Eb trumpet, but
is a piece of cake compared to a picc. And they never have to transpose,
either.......)

Fourthly, so much of the repertoire is such crap. Bad arrangements
of popular tunes which are unsuited to the medium abound. Frankly,
brass bands can't swing, and can't play jazz, rock or pop. But they
try. Oh god, they try.

Fifth, they ignore much of what they're good at. When they were
a progressive musical development, there were lots of arrangements of popular
classics, and lots of good quality original writing. They avoid this
repertoire now because it's "old-fashioned". But there is nothing
to replace it, and they have failed to evolve. If the Sousa band
evolved into the Eastman Wind Ensemble, Black Dyke Mills evolved
into........Black Dyke Mills.

Sixth, they are very working class, even if a lot of the players are
middle class. This has been a bad thing for music in this country,
and particularly for brass musicians. String players and woodwind
players can be artists, but brass players see themselves as hard-drinking
thugs. This is an over-generalisation, and a caricature, but
it's an image that lots of brass players like to live down to, and it gives
the rest of us a bad name. I still find
orchestral fixers amazed when it's possible to provide a brass section
which will 1) turn up 2) be sober before AND during the concert 3) not
disappear to the pub in the interval and 4) try to play with, not
against the other musicians.

> I realize that my surprise may sound like skepticism, and I don't> want to offend anyone. In Shakespearean scholarship, many
folks> really *want* to believe in the democratic but unlikely myth of
the> unlettered, barely-educated commoner who grew up to be the greatest> writer in history. These folks would say, "see, you can
be anything> you want to if you put your mind to it!" and point to William> Shakspere of Stratford. In fact, the writer of the plays
most> certainly knew four languages fluently and was in the constant
company> of books, royals, courtiers, and professionals--in other words,
a> nobleman. It destroys romantic notions but it explains logically> what orthodox scholars have called "genius" for four hundred years.

Well, there was a time not long ago in this country that if you worked
hard you could make something of yourself. There is a tradition,
and, in my view a noble one, of self-education for the working classes.
Brass bands are a manifestation of this tradition. I know lots of
people who have not let their lack of connections or
material wealth stand in the way of their intellectual development
or artistic development (and not only in this country : Andre spent some
time in mining, didn't he? I don't know many upper middle class miners........)
The tragedy of the brass band "movement" (see, it's that class war word
again) is that it has not moved with the times.

And, going back to poets, I would say that Robert Burns could give Shakespeare
a good run for his money. He DEFINITELY was not a nobleman.
(But then, he digressed, you are heading for one my pet theories, that
the English don't care how good you are, as long as you are well bred,
and the Scots don't care how well bred you are, as long as you are educated.
Americans, of course, don't care what you are as long as you're rich........)

;-)

(Inserts defensive smiley to save time replying to the "irony challenged")

> *Are* all the players in the Colliery band miners or former miners??> Is it possible for so many excellent part-time players to live
in one> small community??Not since about 1930. See above!

> Please explain the tradition of amateur> musicianship in England so that I can pass it on to my doubting
but> musically literate colleague.

This is the real point : brass bands are not the only manifestation
of the amateur music tradition. Another (and in my view more important
one) is the choral tradition. Brits (well some of them) just love
choral singing. There are good choirs everywhere. Where I live
(about 150,000 in the town) there are at least six good (I mean really
capable) choirs, each about fifty to a hundred strong. There is some
duplication of membership, but not a lot (I mean, if they each rehearse
one night a week, how many can you join?). I do more orchestral work
accompanying choirs than anything else. But again, I think the music
is secondary to the herd instinct : they like choral singing, not solos
or small groups. It's team spirit on public display!

Sorry, everyone, I seem to have got a bit carried away! But there
is no short answer to the brass band question. Partly, they're a
wonderful training ground for brass players : where else can you get three
solid hours of precision playing in a night? Partly, they're our
cultural heritage. Partly, they're a dying anachronism. If
you see trumpet playing as a tradition that stretches back to pre-biblical
times, then brass bands are an offshoot of the main stem, but one which
is growing ever farther away from its roots, and will eventually wither,
and die. Brass bands might still be sort of popular, but they
are becoming an increasingly marginalised passtime, and without real popular
support, I doubt if their educational worth will be enough to let them
survive. Certainly, their artistic merits won't.

They are about as relevant to the real world of music as trooping the
colour is to modern warfare.